


In the Blood

by Serindrana



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Cousin Incest, F/M, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-06
Updated: 2011-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-27 00:22:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serindrana/pseuds/Serindrana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles and ficlets, in no particular orders, concerning GreyTaliesin's Angelo Tabris and my Fynnea Tabris. Not canon with Temper, Temper. Included are gender-flip AUs, high school AUs, and more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Measure of a Man's Blood [M]

**Author's Note:**

> In every bit except the high school AU ficlets, Fynnea and Angelo are cross-cousins (he's her mother's brother's son). For the purposes of story, we're assuming elves allow cross-cousin marriage.
> 
> (In the high school AU, they just happen to have the same last name.)

_1 . when no one is looking_

 

She dragged him to anonymous little hole in Denerim, apologizing only that she didn't know if the swill they served was any good. She wanted privacy, she told him as she hauled him out the Alienage gates and over the bridge, just now being repaired. She knew everybody in the Alienage, and half of Denerim recognized her face, but she knew just the spot.

What she didn't tell him was that Zevran had found it a week before they left the city.

There were memories there, in the wood and the smell and the barkeep, but they were _good_ memories, and it was a good place. Angelo liked it, whatever they served, and he liked the barmaids, and he laughed and grinned and she watched and lived it as if it were her own abandon. When he drank, little bits of his mother's Antivan spun out of him, twisting his words, peppering them with exclamations she only knew because of Zevran.

But he wasn't Zevran. They were a world apart. He wasn't Zevran, but he _was_ rough and loyal and a good man (mostly), and he was handsome. He knew it, too, the ass, but it was amusing to watch.

And lost on the fumes of other men's oblivion, away from the eyes of those who knew her, she dragged him close and found his mouth with hers.

 

\---

 

 _2 . bleeding out_

 _  
_

__

"You _fucking_ idiot!" Fynnea shouted, but he didn't hear her. He didn't hear much else except the too-loud thudding of his pulse that wasn't quite in time with itself. His breath rattled wet in his lungs, and he squinted up at the sky.

He thought this would have hurt more.

There was an upside; an attack like this left Fynnea rosy-cheeked with exertion, her eyes bright and lips curled in a snarl, and the spatter of blood across her face and across her tattoo really did suit her. Her anger was familiar. Her tears-

 _Mierda_ , Fynnea didn't cry.

He looked down his body. It had to be bad; it couldn't be anything else, not if _Fynnea Tabris, Hero of Ferelden_ , was crying on the battlefield. She hadn't even cried after the horror that had been her wedding. She hadn't cried when she found her father caged.

He could barely see the wound, but he could see blood - _his_ blood, but darker, thicker, _worse_ than any bar fight he's been in, the kind of blood around Nelaros's corpse, the kind of blood around a dead man - pooling and sputtering with every breath.

"Get angry!" she was shouting. "Be fucking _pissed_! You piece of _shit_ , how did you let them-"

Bandits. _Bandits_. On the road to Redcliffe - no, Rainsfere - to visit an old friend, and it had been fucking _shems_ and-

Angelo hissed out a curse, and Fynnea's brow relaxed for just a moment. Just enough. And then she pressed her hand hard against his stomach and reached for her pack. 

"I'll get you back together, but you had better keep fighting it," she breathed, and he nodded, a shuddering grin on his face.

 

\---

 

 _3 . blackest of hearts_

 

If Angelo's temper was legendery, Fynnea's was mythic. He had seen her snap and snarl and break a man in two, watched her tear a man to pieces with blade and hands and _teeth_. And there were stories, too, of how she had killed a dragon and drank its blood (stories he knew were true, because she'd shared the last vial of its blood with him and he had spent the night wretching out the window while she held his hair back and laughed at him). And yet somehow, her capacity for cruelty still astonished him.

She hadn't been _cruel_ before she left for the Blight.

She'd spat and hissed when her father had decided to marry her off, and she had been a terror of a child (it was why they had gotten along even then), but she had a good heart then.

Now, she had a man on his stomach, a blade at his throat, her knee in his spine, and she was wrenching him up and up.

"I need to know, and you need to tell me," she said, and it was almost a purr. She shifted so that the flat of her sword was against the shem's throat, and pushed, then reached back and pulled a dagger from her hip, held it to his cheek, and traced a line down. "And if I need to flay every inch of you to get you to speak, I'll do it gladly."

\--

The man died with far less skin than he'd started with, and Angelo ended the night with less food in his stomach and more alcohol than even he'd expected. He watched Fynnea suspiciously as she herded him up the stairs to their inn room, and as soon as they were behind closed doors, he snapped,

"What the fuck was _that_?"

"Crow secret," she said, running a hand through her hair. Her fingers - strong, calloused, unbelievably _clever_ \- were now stained with the blood from beneath a man's flesh.

"Oh, from _him_ ," Angelo muttered. "Of course. He cuts you up and ties you down and teaches you how to-"

" _Stop_ ," she hissed, coming up close to him, pushing him back against the door. Her mouth - _teeth_ , he thought, not lips, not tongue - was close to his. He stared her down. She looked away.

"The Blight taught me that. A Grey Warden does what she must."

"That wasn't- you're not _that_."

"What Zevran gave me," she said, shaking her head, "was the ability to accept it as a piece of myself. You would do well to do the same."

 

\---

 

 _4 . bruised flesh_

 

She rubbed at her jaw, swollen and discolored from his fist, and laughed. "That your best?" she taunted, wanting him to rise to the bait, wanting him to remind her she was alive - and him, too. She'd never wanted him to have to face darkspawn, or beasts, or anything other than a bigoted _shem_ , and there they were, in a little shit hole halfway to Tevinter, an adventure gone down in blood behind them.

He _should_ have been pissed.

And he was. He struck her again, and she moved with it, ducked and surged forward, catching him around the waist and knocking him down. She pulled his hair and he growled, trying to shove her under him. She kneed him in the stomach, and he swore.

"You're going to die," he panted, shoving a leg between hers and using the leverage to finally push her over. "You're going to- _why didn't you tell me, you fucking_ -"

She caught his throat in a hand, gripping hard enough to make him retreat, hard enough to leave bruises for the morning. But she didn't have an answer, couldn't find the words.

They spoke with their bodies instead.

\--

"Why?" he asked as they laid sprawled, naked and exhausted and covering in purple-blue patches, sickly-green old marks, bright red new ones. "Why the _fuck_ not?"

She didn't move, staring up at the ceiling. "Always thought one of us would be gone by then."

"I'm not _him_ ," Angelo said, and his hand found hers, grabbing it and using it to drag her against him. She let him.

"But I might be."

 

\----

 

 _5 . the thing you fear the most_

 __

It was a house. 

A house, a space for a life and a family, and Angelo scuffed his boot against the half-rotted floor boards and waited for her to say something. It hadn't been his idea. If he'd had his way, they would have had a little room, not really either of theirs, a place to stay, a place to fuck, a place to sleep.

Shianni and Cyrion and Sorris had insisted, though.

He watched her. He watched her for any sign of anger, or disgust, or fear, or _I'm going to run_. He focused on the faint, pale scar of a deathroot leaf on the back of her neck when he couldn't watch her face anymore.

"A house?" she finally asked, looking to him.

He nodded. "Uh. Yeah. I just-"

"Got a ring to go with it?"


	2. Scars [Temper, Temper AU, AO]

It's a sordid little back bedroom, and she can still hear the beat and song of the tavern through the thin walls, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that Angelo has her shirt off and is working at yanking her leggings down, is bending her over not the bed but a side table that's little more than a barrel.

It's the first time that she's been _touched_ like this since Zevran left for Antiva, and she's waited for over a year for word from him. She's done waiting. She's _done waiting_ , and he's finally got her smalls down and-

She cries out, scrabbling for a hold on the barrel as he shoves into her, no preparation but the ale on his breath and her _desperate_ need for something like this. It's not enough and for a moment, pain blossoms - and then it contracts, transforms, and she hisses his name and bucks back. One of his hands moves from her hip to her shoulder, the better to impale her onto him on another harsh thrust, but this time she's ready, she takes it, she whispers out words of pleasure and encouragement that border on insults.

And then he stops.

The hand on her shoulder loosens, and she feels him trail his fingers down her spine. Her hair has fallen in front of her face, but she tries to look over her shoulder, to see more than him dissheveled and buried to the hilt in her, flushed and needy and confused.

One finger traces a curve that she knows too well, and she can only growl, "Later, I'll tell you later-"

"He did this?" Angelo murmurs, and his brow furrows.

"Shut up, Maker, shut _up_. Just fuck me!" She doesn't want to talk about this, not now, and she shoves back against him to distract him.

He takes the hint. He withdraws for only a heartbeat, and then he thrusts hard back into her, bowing over her until he can catch her ear in his teeth and bite. She arches and cries out - _Angelo_ , his name, not Zevran's, not a ghost's, not a distant memory's. That's what she wants. That's all she wants.

She gives herself to it.


	3. A Heavy Greatsword [Genderflip AU, G]

Fynn tries to lift it once, and while he can manage to bring it up to shoulder-height in imitation of a guard he's seen Angela use, he can't hold it there without the blade wavering, dipping down, and finally pointing to her feet. She snorts.

"You never fucking knew how to use a _real_ sword," she comments, and he can't help but laugh, lowering the blade and handing it hilt-first to her. When their fingers brush, he siddles closer, then rises onto his toes. She's a head taller than he is, and pissy, but that doesn't matter when he winds his fingers into her long, dark tresses and tugs down.

"Mine's still bigger where it counts," Fynn purrs, and he can _feel_ the tensing shudder that goes through her.

 _Gotcha_.


	4. Beneath Her Breath [Temper, Temper AU, T]

They're in Antiva when it happens, six months gone from Ferelden. They're in the middle of a crowded plaza, and Angelo almost misses it when he hears her whisper _Zevran_.

But he doesn't miss it.

She's told him over the last year she's come to his bed that she's over this _Zevran_. He's seen the scars and marks on her from him, those that can be undone (the earring is gone; he hopes it's gone) and those that cannot (her tattoo, the deathroot marking her back). He's seen the damage this assassin did in leaving.

And he refuses to let this carrion eater circle around _his_ Fynnea any longer.

His fingers close around her wrist and she startles, tenses, her hand going for her weapon. But when she meets his gaze she relaxes. _That_ is what this is. She's impulsive and infuriating (but not _ugly_ , he never means it when he says that, not really) and she's driving him mad, but she _trusts_ him. The Hero of Ferelden trusts him. The most powerful and dangerous woman he knows trusts- _him_.

She lets him pull her from the plaza, a little stunned perhaps from the sight of the ghost, perhaps from his violence, but when he has her against the wall, hands sliding up her thighs to cup her ass and lift her against him, she roars back to life. Her lips are hot on his, teeth nipping and tongue searching, and when he grinds against her, he's not entirely sure who's winning.

And then she breathes _Angelo_ against his lips, and it doesn't matter.


	5. Sweat and Blood [Wardens Together AU, T]

"No, this is _my_ job," Angelo says, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I can do it myself," she responds as she begins shucking the woolens she wears beneath her armor. She's stiff and bloody and caked in grime, redolent only of sweat and piss (though that at least, reminds her of home), and all she wants is a good bath, a nice bath. Zevran would have been a lovely addition, but Angelo has already sent the Antivan away with a glare that speaks of lurking violence.

"Well, I'm going to guard you. In case he comes _back_ , the little prick."

"It's not little," Fynnea says as she reaches for the catch on her breast band, not looking at her cousin.

Her cousin who sputters and then kicks a stone hard enough to send it bouncing over the uneven earth. "I don't- I don't want to _know_ that! Fucking- it's bad enough he had to be the first-"

She glances over, surprised, as the fabric slithers down her stomach, her fingers stilled on the edge of her smalls. "… Angelo, are you-"

"Shut up."

"Are you _jealous_?" She grins and crosses the space between them, wiggling out of her smalls as she goes. He has his back to her now, but he has his shoulders hunched in just the way that she _knows_ means he's embarrassed. And his hips are canted the way they are when he's seen a barmaid with a low-enough cut blouse. "Oh, you are. You _are_."

"Fuck off," he mutters.

 _If_ she fits herself up against him, dirty as she is, and _if_ he stiffens only until he covers one of her hands with his, there's nothing wrong with that. His father is her mother's brother, and while she calls him _cousin_ he's not the same as Shianni or Soris. He could have been her husband. And _if_ she begins tugging at the laces of his leggings with a wicked grin, and if she rises onto her toes to nuzzle at his throat, and _if_ he responds to it all with a groan and a quick turn so he has her about the waist _-_

 __

 _Well._ She has absolutely no problems with that, and she loops her arms around his neck and kisses him.


	6. Beginnings [High School AU, T]

The first time they fuck (and no, no matter how Soris asks it or dances around it, it wasn't _having sex_ and it wasn't _making love_ \- they're not like that and he knows it) is in his messy little room while his father's out, and neither one of them has a condom. Angelo promises he'll pull out.

He does.

But that's not what's important, or remarkable or what she remembers a year later when they're still together (and still fucking, and still not making love or having sex). What's important is that for all his rough edges (and hers), for all his bravado (and hers), she doesn't hide the fact that she's a virgin, and he doesn't hesitate to take it slow.

But it's still fucking.


	7. Heavenly Bodies [High School AU, T]

The gang he runs with isn’t big and isn’t  _bad_ , not really, but everybody knows he’s a part of it and gives him a wide berth. People sidestep him carefully in the halls. People don’t make eye contact.

Except for  _her_.

She’s short and ginger with too much muscle for a girl. She’s champion of the school kickboxing team - or was, before it lost funding - and she’s from the same part of town he’s from, but her cousin is that loud hippy chick who protests everything and her dad’s a town delegate even though nobody listens to him. She’s not his type.

Except that she’ll stare him down, and when one day he catches her against the lockers, she just crosses her arms over her chest and smiles up at him, teeth showing and eyes flashing.

“You want to start something?” he asks, voice rough and low and filled with every drop of swagger he can find. He expects her to back down, or turn away, or fence with him - tell him  _start what_  or  _back the fuck off_.

He doesn’t expect her to, just as the bell for fifth period rings, lean forward with another flash of teeth and grab his junk.

“Depends on what that something is.”

—

She shrugs and takes a drag on her cigarette. They’re behind the school, by the back-most dumpster, and it’s a familiar spot for both of them. Comfortable.

 _Date night_.

“I’m just saying,” she says, “we have the same last name. That makes us- cousins or something, doesn’t it?”

He snorts. “Yeah, like every  _Smith_  or  _Brosca_  is related. My dad’s never heard of your dad.”

“You asked?”

He looks away, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I mean- I mean, it came up. And it’s just, plenty of people have the same last night, toots.”

“ _Toots_?” He knows it’s a bad idea the moment his back hits the dumpster wall, her cigarette burning out on the sticky pavement behind her, her hands hard and shoving. “Don’t you ever fucking call me  _toots_  again.”

He finds a grin because she isn’t hitting him, not yet.

“Got it,  _miss Fynnea_.”

That he isn’t bleeding or seeing stars after she cuffs him means she doesn’t mind, not really, and he can’t help but smile.

—

His room is small and cramped and dirty. He never makes his bed. There’s dirty laundry on the floor, empty chip bags, an xbox with controllers that never untangle. But it’s more  _home_  in a lot of ways than the too-clean house her father keeps, and she doesn’t really mind sitting on top of a pile of old shirts.

What she  _does_  mind is that he plays stupid games that are stupidly hard, and when she tells him, he just tells her she’s a girl and no good at them.

His floor, unvacuumed for years, works well enough for her to push him down onto it, and there’s enough room for him to roll her over, enough room for them to fight - and laugh - and kiss.

—

“So whose car is this anyway?” he asks as he nuzzles against her throat, marked with hickies the size of a quarter. They’re in the back seat of an old beater, and there are some math books in the footwell, a gym bag he thinks is Fynnea’s, a few fast food bags. And there’s Fynnea, half-naked and not caring about it even though they’re parked in the drive of the city park.

She laughs and digs her fingers into his hip. “My cousin’s.”

“The activist chick?”

“What? No, she rides a bike.” Fynnea shrugs. “Other one. Soris.”

“He going to mind?” They’ve made a mess of things, after all - they’re sweaty and sticky and the smell of  _sex_  probably isn’t going to leave any time soon. It’s a wonder Fynnea’s moans and his grunts aren’t echoing in the worn seat fabric.

“He can deal with it. He’s a big boy.”

—

And then there’s prom.

It wasn’t like she expected him to go, or to ask her, and he  _doesn’t_. But she also never planned on going, and that idea’s fucked over the moment she comes home and Cyrion introduces her to ‘her date’.

He’s nice enough, if a little clean cut and a little bland and a little  _trying too hard_ , and at least Soris has a good little girl picked out for him, too.

It’s the dress that rankles most. It’s over-priced and  _pink_  and she never would have put it on if Cyrion hadn’t had that  _look_ , that,  _my daughter, the love of my life_  look that she can’t say no to. Shianni does her make-up. She’s primped and polished and her only victory is that Cyrion sighs and says yes, she can wear her boots, the skirt hem is long enough that nobody will notice.

Nelaros notices in the car and makes a joke.

Fynnea just stares out the window.

She’s snuck three cans of beer before the dancing even really starts, and everything is  _almost_  going fine - Nelaros is nice and awkward and, more importantly, not clingy; Shianni is close to shouting about her newest cause; Soris is finally working up the courage to ask where she got the booze from. But then Vaughan is sauntering over. He’s an ass, kicked out of prep school for drugs and now trying to rule theirs with charisma and money and influence, and somehow it’s fucking working. The seas part for him. He crosses the room to  _her_ , and asks her to dance.

“Already got a date,” she says, taking hold of Nelaros’s arm, and she thinks that’s it.

But it isn’t. He’s high or maybe drunk or maybe just an utter douchebag, but somehow Nelaros ends up on the ground, nose broken or worse, and Vaughan’s lackeys have Shianni and are cajoling her to come with them, they’d show her a good time, and Vaughan has his hand around her wrist and is crooning,  _just a dance, that idiot’s not good enough for you, come with me_.

She knees him in the balls, and all hell breaks lose.

It’s somewhere in there that she feels a familiar touch at her elbow, and she stops just short of punching Angelo in the face. He’s dressed up only in that he has his dad’s suit jacket on (patched and worn and fifteen years out of style) over his t-shirt instead of his usual leather jacket, but he’s the most welcome sight she’s had in hours and together, they’re able to drag Vaughan out back. They leave him curled up behind the dumpster.

Shianni is in the bathroom, staring into the mirror. There are bruises around her neck and her dress is torn, and when Fynnea tries to touch her, she snaps and flushes and backs away.

Soris can’t find his date.

Her dress is dirty and she thinks there’s blood on it, Vaughan’s blood. Her knuckles are bruised, and the police are showing up just as she manages to get her family back together and out the door, Angelo taking Soris’s keys.

Fynnea fucking  _hates_  prom.

—

He stays, even though it’s fucking awkward and he’s still ready for a fight. He stays and they take turns cleaning the scrapes and cuts on each other’s knuckles, while Shianni sits in the kitchen with Cyrion and does her best not to talk about what happened and Soris paces and makes phone calls.

“Vaughan’s going to press charges,” he tells them.

“No, he’s not,” Fynnea says, then hisses and swears as Angelo dabs rubbing alcohol on her hand. “No he’s  _fucking_  not. He won’t.”

Angelo reaches for his phone. “No, he won’t.”

—

Angelo’s dad is a good man - Italian immigrant, glass-blower, stubborn as fuck and a great cook. She spends more and more time over there, and when summer break comes - the last one, she thinks, and then she has to do more than work part-time, has to do more than kickbox and drink and play cards - she’s there for dinner more nights than she’s not. He’s in the wrong part of town, but so is she, and she likes it there.

—

She works in a gym that summer, and he helps out at his dad’s workshop, and it’s like prom has made them grow up just a little. They’ve still got a year of school left, and they still shout at each other, shove each other, curse each other out when they play  _Gears of War_  and Fynnea can’t remember to use cover, but there are also moments where they just sit together, or she falls asleep on his bed and he can’t help but glance over from the TV to look at her, or he follows her home and  _meets the family_.

He wants to ask what she’s going to do when she graduates, but he doesn’t know how.

—

It’s August and school starts back up in a week. They’re on the roof of the apartment building he lives in with his dad, and there’s a six pack empty behind them, a nalgene full of vodka and orange juice between them. Fynnea’s smoking again, even though she said she quit last month.

It’s stupidly hot and stupidly humid, and he can’t wait until it’s wet and cold and nasty again; at least that he knows how to deal with. He has enough ratty sweatshirts to keep warm.

Fynnea purses her lips, and then yanks her shirt off and tosses it aside.

He does the same.

“Gonna try to actually pass English this year?” she asks as she offers him her cig. He takes it.

“Maybe.”

“I think I’ll do it. And you’ll do it.”

And they’ll graduate.

He takes a drag and stares up at the few stars he can see through the haze of city light. “Gonna stay around this year?” he asks, hoping it sounds just light and conversational and not full of meaning and nerves. It’s Fynnea, and he’s him, and that doesn’t make sense.

She rests her head on his shoulder and he looks down, startled.

She smiles.

“Yeah. I think I’ll be here for a while.”


End file.
